About Brandon King
His Story
About Brandon
Brandon King lives in Southwest Idaho. He and his wife share their home with two elderly cats, Parker (a dumped stray that adopted them at a rest stop in eastern Montana) and Albert (a rescue from a local shelter). Besides being a writer, Brandon has been a chef, school bus driver, delivery driver, office manager, security guy, youth minister, band member, Habitat for Humanity volunteer, financial advisor, Managing Principal and galleried artist.
All of which, in various ways, creeps into his writing. Because, you know, life experience has a way of doing that. He’s completed the Seattle-to-Portland Bicycle Classic, a 200 mile bike ride in 2 days, one time solo, another time on a tandem (with his wife). He’s rock climbed in Joshua Tree, Monterey, Leavenworth, Smith Rock and Anacortes. And you can know that all that time spent on rock faces also creeps into his writing about the realms of gargoyles!
Brandon loves watching reruns of Forged In Fire, epic fantasy movies or classic B-grade movies on Svengoolie.
His debut novel, The Quest for the Temple Key, made him a “Top Ten Idaho Author” as well as earned North American Book Awards in young adult and fantasy novel categories.
And Now For Something Fun…
- Parker and Albert, my cats, love to sleep. A LOT. Often on my lap. Which is charming and endearing…and also makes it very difficult to type properly. You see, they wish not to be disturbed.
- My favorite food is a hazelnut latte. Then Thai food. Then ice cream bars.
- I have quite a few “favorite writers.” Does that work? If you can’t have more than one, then I’m stuck. When my daughter (also a writer) was little, I read out loud all of LOTR and the Narnia stories. The voice I used for Gollum was so raspy…it almost made me cough up a lung. She loved them, nevertheless. But obviously, I’m a fan of faith-driven storylines. You may also count me in as a Potterhead.
- The inspiration to write a fantasy novel was my daughter. When she was in middle school, she tired of all the vampire and zombie stories. So I wrote a book for her. And it inspired her enough to write her own! I love her stories about updated fairies, with a steampunky, dystopian flare.
- We’d love to return to Norway to visit our friends, as well as all of the regions where all of my grandparents came from. Then maybe Scotland, since that would be cool.
Creative Brandon
THE AUTHOR
Okay, you already knew Brandon writes, right? But maybe you didn’t know his two published novels will soon be going through a new cover “re-branding.” And his Gargoyle Chronicles series will include 7 stories in total. He’s aiming to have all of them released in the next 2 years.
FILMMAKER
Brandon doesn’t have the time or the skill (honestly) to make great films. Even short ones. But he has nevertheless created a lot of hypershort videos. And he’s the “Prop Guy” for Taylor Hunter’s award-winning short films (like Gargyrl), creating wings, power-cell backpacks and stuff.
ARTIST
Besides writing and video production, Brandon’s creativity includes art and music. As a teenager, he sketched out (with a #2 pencil) this picture of Harry, a 103-year old fellow that had been featured in the news. Lithographs of Harry have been in various galleries in the Pacific Northwest.
Brandon’s Videos
Brandon enjoys the process of “story boarding” his book trailer videos! It’s another way of working out how to best tell a story—in this case through a different (visual) medium.
While they are loads of fun to develop and finally publish, in their own way book trailer videos are nearly as much work to produce as the books are. *sigh*
Book Trailer: The Quest
This short introduces The Quest for the Temple Key, Book 1 in The Gargoyle Chronicles. Woot!
Book Trailer: All His Wrath
And this short film throws you into the fires beneath Book 2. There were some very unhappy gargoyles at the end of Book 1. 😏
Epic Fantasy Teaser
Sometimes you just need an epic video to visually tell the story about your epic fantasy stories. We think this short film packs a punch and captures the nature of the gargoyles and what the humans are up against. What do you think?
J. R. R. Tolkien